Open Source Software communities are complex structures where different interests, expectations and visions need to converge and find some kind of equilibrium. In this process, all stakeholders need to understand and comply with a minimal set of rules that guarantee that things happen to the benefit of the community as a whole and that efforts are invested in the most optimal way for that to happen.

Of course, the Kurento team would be happy to have the appropriate resources that allowed providing full and detailed answers to all issues that may arise. Unfortunately this is not the case, and as happens in most OSS projects out there, we need to optimize how efforts are invested and think on the benefit of the community as a whole, instead of ending up satisfying the specific needs of a specific user.

Having said this, it is also clear that complying with a minimum set of netiquette rules is a plus for having questions and issues answered. Most of these rules are common sense, but it may be worthy to state them in a more explicit way so that Kurento users are able to check if they are doing their best to have their issues and questions addressed. Here they go:

Be courteous. Any kind of insult, threat or undervaluation of other people’s efforts will only contribute to having your request ignored.

Make your homework. Asking questions such as “I want to create a system like Skype, please explain me the steps” may require very extensive answers and you’ll probably find that nobody in the community is willing to invest the time to write them, save the case that someone happens to be writing a book on the topic. In general, don’t ask others to make your work.

Follow thereporting guidelines. When creating a new bug report, following these guidelines will greatly help others to study your issue and look for solutions, which in the end is a positive net for you.

Read the documentation first. Requesting help on issues that are clearly addressed in the documentation is, in general, a bad practice.

Check theCommunity Support. Things like opening a new discussion thread on the mailing list dealing with a problem that has already been discussed in another thread, will be probably perceived as slackness by the rest of the community. Avoid this and remember that Google is your friend.

Beware of cross-posting. In general, cross-posting is not considered as a good practice. If for some reason you need to send the same request to different mailing lists, inform in all of them about that providing links to the corresponding threads in the other lists so that the rest of users can check where answers finally arrived.

Be constructive. Claims of the kind “this design is bad” or “you are doing it wrong” are not particularly useful. If you don’t like something, provide specific suggestions (or better code) showing how things should be improved.

Maintain the focus. Kurento Community Support places have the objective of discussing Kurento-related issues. If you want to have information related to other different projects or to WebRTC in general, contact the corresponding community. Of course, spam shall be punished with immediate banning from the mailing lists.

Complying with these rules will contribute to improve the quality of the Kurento Community as a whole, making it the most helpful source of help and support.

Kurento has been supported under Project LERNIM (RTC-2016-4674-7), co-funded by the Ministry of Economy, Finance and Competitiveness of Spain, as well as by the European Regional Development Fund, whose main goal is to promote technological development, innovation and high-quality research.